Do your molehills become mountains?

Do you have a bad habit of making a big deal about nothing?  Do you turn minor issues into major issues?  Do you exaggerate some things way out of proportion?  If you do, you are making molehills into mountains.  Moles are small furry creatures that tunnel under the earth and the dirt from these holes are named mole hills because they are deposited in piles on the top of the ground.  Making these tiny hills into mountains would be a huge task and this is often what we do with our problems.  We make something small into something big and it takes a lot of energy.

Life is difficult and there are always problems to deal with.  Some of these are big and some are small.  What we have to do is determine which ones need to be addressed and which ones need to be dismissed.  If we aren’t able to do this, we end up wasting a large part of our lives dealing with unnecessary problems.  When we encounter difficult situations in life, we need to stop and not react immediately as this can often result in doing or saying something we will soon regret.  Then we should ask ourselves a few important questions:

• How much does this issue really matter?
• Will it matter tomorrow, next week, next year?
• How will my reaction impact the people involved?
• Should I just ignore it or do I need to address it?
• How should I address the problem?

Making a big issue out of something that is not really a big deal, can easily result in communication breakdowns and hurt other people, even ourselves.  It can even cause a small problem to become a big problem. A mole hill does not have to become a mountain.  Learning to stop and think before reacting can help us live a happier and less stressful life.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

 

Are you competing with people or against people?

The world is always pressuring us to compete against others and that winning is the most important thing.  How does this affect us?  Does it make us better or does it make us feel like failures?  Competition is a good thing, it allows us to measure ourselves with others and see where we need to improve.  The problem is we are competing against people and not with people.   Society is obsessed with winning and leads us to believe that if we lose, we are failures and have no value.

The fact is we can’t all win; someone has to lose but this does not make us a loser or a failure.  Competing with others should be a time to enjoy being with others who have the same interests, share ideas and celebrate with the person who does win.  Competition can be a good learning tool that will help us measure how we are doing and let us become a better version of ourselves.

Social media especially makes us feel bad because it always points out the people who are the most beautiful, the most successful, the most powerful;  the people who have it all and have everything we want.  Sadly most of these people are also the most miserable because money and power does not make people happy and it really doesn’t really measure success.  In my opinion, success is achieved when you feel that you have done everything in your power to be the best person you can be and you are satisfied with your life.

When someone wins a game and the rest lose, everyone loses.  However, when someone wins and everyone supports each other, everyone wins.  Instead of competing against others, try competing with them to achieve your goals.  Be a positive influence and show others the importance of working together to become stronger and smarter.

Winning doesn’t always mean being first.  Winning means you’re doing better than you’ve ever done before.  Bonnie Blair

A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals.  Larry Bird

Competing at the highest level is not about winning.  It’s about preparation, courage, understanding and nurturing your people and heart.  Winning is the result.  Joe Torre

Turn your New Year’s Resolutions into Goals

What is a resolution?  The dictionary describes it with various terms:  a firm decision, solving a problem, finding solutions, improvements, a formal statement, a firmness of purpose, etc.   All these things may be good, but they are basically thoughts and not actions.  They are the beginnings of what could be great endings.  Everything starts with a thought but something needs to be done with those life-changing thoughts or they will never become reality.

This is the problem with making New Year Resolutions.  We start off the year with all sorts of ideas and plans which is really great but then we get bored, impatient or frustrated and we give up.  Life gets in the way and we keep on with our bad habits, struggling and feeling like we have failed until the next year rolls around.  Then we try again.

Change doesn’t come easily.  It takes patience, perseverance and planning.  Instead of just resolving to do something, we need to turn our resolutions into realistic goals that we can work towards.  The most important step in making change is writing down your thoughts.  Just leaving thoughts floating around in your head will rarely accomplish anything.

• write down all your amazing ideas and thoughts
• circle the 1-3 most important things you want to accomplish in the next year; don’t try to do too much or you will soon become stressed and not be able to keep going
• set up a plan to accomplish those things, breaking them down into small steps than can be easily be done every day or week
• every day, check off what you have done in order to accomplish your goals
• if you don’t succeed that day, don’t beat yourself up, just promise yourself you will do it the next day
• keep going even when you feel frustrated or defeated
• celebrate small victories as you go along
• get family and friends involved so they can encourage and support you
• review your goals and make necessary revisions if something is not working properly

If you stick to a WRITTEN PLAN, you sill soon seen some positive changes happening.  Be patient, be persistent and you will be victorious!

 

Don’t let your past weigh you down

Past regrets are a heavy burden.  They can weigh you down and destroy any chance of having a happy, fruitful life.  Don’t allow the past to hold you back and keep you from moving forward in life.  Forgive people for hurting you, loving them is far more important than holding grudges about something that is over and done with.  And stop worrying about the future; most of the things we worry about never happen anyway.  Regret and worry just rob us of the joy and peace that we could be experiencing today.  When things are difficult, love harder, encourage others and be supportive.

This is the day which the LORD has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Psalm 118:24

A new year’s challenge to all women

It is a brand new year and time to think about change.  How is your life going?  Do you wish some things could be different?  Change requires action, so if you don’t make some definite plans and put them in action, nothing will change.  I’m not talking about New Year’s Resolutions, which are just nice ideas that start well and end quickly.  I am talking about real change and making your life better.

Life is hard and there is no way to change that fact.  But many of us are searching for perfection and we make our lives way more difficult than they need to be.  Woman especially care too much about what other people think and we believe the lie that happiness is found in other people and things.  We shouldn’t be searching for happiness at all because happiness is short-lived and relies totally on outside sources which will never be what we want them to be.

Growing up, we are very influenced by the world, watching and listening to our parents and other significant adults, believing what they tell us and copying their actions.  Some of us are fortunate to have good role models but most of us grow up feeling somewhat unloved, unwanted and unimportant.  How does that prepare us to face the challenges of the world?  Then add the powerful impact of the media on our lives, and the lie is confirmed that we are not good enough and nobody cares about us unless of course we surround ourselves with possessions.

I want to challenge all women to face any lies from their past and understand that it does not define them.  If people have said or done anything in our past that has hurt us, we need to realize that they are speaking and acting from their own pain or their lack of knowledge.  It is so easy to hurt the people we love because our expectations are unrealistic or way too high.  Nobody will ever be the person we want them to be and we will never be the person they want us to be.

The only person that can make us happy is ourselves.  How?  We need to:

• look at ourselves through the eyes of God instead of the eyes of the world and see ourselves as a beautiful creation, loved and deeply wanted.
• reject any lies that we have heard (not good enough, not smart enough, failure, nobody loves you).  None of these are true.
• replace any lies with the truth that we are lovable, worthy and valuable.
• forgive our family, our friends and any other significant people in our lives for hurting us with their words or actions.
• forgive ourselves for believing lies about ourselves.
• work hard to mend any broken relationships.
• start sharing our love and helping others.

I challenge you to start the New Year by unpacking any baggage that is holding you back from experiencing a wonderful life.  What baggage are you carrying around that is causing pain?  Do you have unresolved anger, bitterness, jealousy or hatred?  It is easy to hold onto negative feelings, but it takes character to release those feeling and forgive.  Unpack those feelings, resolve them and forgive so you can start living a life of joy and peace.

Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn’t listening.   Emma Thompson

It’s time for us to turn to each other, not on each other.   Jesse Jackson

Everyone makes mistakes and needs forgiveness.  Holding on to pain just hurts us.  If we are able to forgive others, we will also be forgiven and the pain will be released.  Unknown